


Alien

by thecarlysutra



Category: Actor RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-13
Updated: 2011-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-23 17:25:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SUMMARY: “You’re like an alien, or an escaped mental patient, or something,” Tom says.  “You can’t be real.”<br/>AUTHOR'S NOTES: Written for agapeeternal, who wanted a story based on Katy Perry's "ET."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alien

  
They meet at a party. It’s a low-key affair out in the hills, the house of some girl with Cyndi Lauper hair who had three lines in _The Outsiders_ that ended up on the cutting room floor. She invited Tom, and she was cute enough that he said yes.

How Val ended up there, he’ll never know.

Tom isn’t much for parties, and he and a beer wander through the rooms of people dancing and talking—an outsider, har har. He walks over the Cyndi Lauper girl, making out with a Madonna-clone on the floor by the stereo speakers, heads to the kitchen for another beer.

There’s a mob of people in there, but instead of standing around talking or lazily sucking face, they are standing in a circle, watching this guy. He’s blonde and beautiful in a slightly obscene way: his lips too plush, the turn of his hips too suggestive. And, of all things, he’s juggling. Juggling apples and pears and oranges from a bowl on the kitchen table, and playing the crowd like a street corner hustler.

“Oh, I don’t know, this whole house of cards could fold at any minute,” he says, grinning, as he adds another apple to the affair.

Just strange, and somehow exactly the kind of thing that happens at Hollywood parties. Tom watches, enrapt, forgetting his quest for beer. The blonde guy takes a bite from a pear without breaking stride juggling, the fruit spinning around his head, spinning in the air like they’ve taken orbit around him. He’s not juggling; he’s just the sun they worship. The pear is juicy, and a tear of juice drips down from the corner of the guy’s lips; his tongue—too pink—darts out to catch it, suggestively slow.

Tom’s mouth is dry. He really should be going.

The blonde guy collects all the orbiting fruit in his arms, and takes a bow. The crowd claps and hollers; guys slap him on the back, and girls press themselves close, whispering congratulations and other dirty words in his ear. Eventually the crowd disperses back into the party going on all around them; eventually it’s just the blonde guy and Tom.

“That, uh—what’d you go to clown college or something?”

The blonde guy grins. He sets the fruit back in the bowl, all except for the pear; he takes another juicy bite, speaks with his mouth half full.

“You could say that,” he says. “Juilliard.”

“Wow. Uh, good for you. I didn’t know they taught juggling at Juilliard.”

The grin just gets bigger. “Maybe they don’t. Maybe I was raised by circus people.”

“Is that true?”

The blonde guy just shrugs. His lips are moist with pear juice, and Tom can’t seem to look away.

“I’m Tom,” he says, and extends a hand, realizing after a beat that that’s a stupidly formal thing to do.

The guy shakes it, though, his hand slightly slick from the pear. “Val.”

Tom’s never heard that name before, but it’s somehow appropriate; the guy’s a completely foreign concept, like something from another planet.

“You having a good time?” Tom asks.

Val meets his eyes, holds onto his hand a beat too long. “Always.”

Tom swallows, thickly. “Yeah, well, I should—”

 _Get back_ , he was going to say, but then Val walks toward him.

“Get a beer?” he asks, and then he does some sleight of hand so that instead of the pear core he’s holding a frosty cold beer. He holds it out for Tom.

“Mind reader,” Tom says, and takes it. Their fingers brush in the exchange, and Val’s still looking at him in this deeply unnerving way, like he can see past Tom’s skin and bones, all the way through him.

“Just another of my many, many skills,” Val says, waggling his eyebrows.

Despite himself, Tom laughs. He takes a drink of his beer, and then another, and then somehow he’s on his third beer and Val is still making him laugh.

“You’re like an alien, or an escaped mental patient, or something,” Tom says. “You can’t be real.”

Val grins, like this is the finest compliment he’s ever received. Then, all of a sudden, he takes Tom’s hand, and he’s leading him out the doors onto the back porch. The air is cool and the stars and the moon are all bright and crisp against the dark night sky.

“What are we doing?” Tom asks. His head is swimming slightly; he should have stopped at two beers.

“Looking for UFOs,” Val says, like it should be obvious.

“Are they coming to take you home?”

Val lets the comment roll off him. His face is uplifted; the moon reflects pale off his lovely features.

Tom’s mouth is suddenly dry again. Val looks down, and when he sees Tom looking at him, he smiles. Val is absolutely not the kind of guy Tom goes for; he needs too much attention, and he makes too much noise. Still. He’s very beautiful, and there’s something beautiful, too, in his noise, in his search for attention. Something endearing. And maybe it’s that Tom’s had too much to drink, or that Val really does have some kind of extraterrestrial powers, but all of a sudden Tom is leaning in, and he’s taking Val by the hair, and he’s kissing him, good and kissing him.

Val tastes like the pear, and he doesn’t act surprised in the least.  



End file.
